Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an acid diffusion control agent, a radiation-sensitive resin composition, a resist pattern-forming method, a compound and a production method.
Discussion of the Background
Upon irradiation with exposure light such as an ArF excimer laser beam or a KrF excimer laser beam, chemically amplified radiation-sensitive resin compositions generate an acid from an acid generating agent at a light-exposed site, and a reaction catalyzed by the acid causes a difference in rates of dissolution in a developer solution between a light-exposed sites and a light-unexposed site, thereby forming a resist pattern on a substrate.
Such radiation-sensitive resin compositions are required to have improved various performances such as resolution along with the advance of microfabrication technologies. To address the demand, an acid diffusion control agent is incorporated in the radiation-sensitive resin composition for the purpose of appropriately controlling diffusion of the acid generated from the acid generating agent. As such an acid diffusion control agent, nitrogen atom-containing compounds having a polar group and a ring structure have been noted, which reportedly increase the resolution and the depth of focus (see Japanese Unexamined Patent Application, Publication Nos. 2002-363148 and 2002-226470).
Under such circumstances, in these days when further miniaturization of resist patterns is advancing, further increase in the resolution and the depth of focus has been demanded, and additionally, a superior line-width-roughness (LWR) performance which is an indicative of a variation of the line width of the resist patterns is also demanded. Moreover, according to the conventional acid diffusion control agent described above, resist patterns formed are likely to be accompanied by top loss, etc., and thus an improvement of the rectangularity of the cross-sectional shape of the resist pattern is also demanded.